


not with the eyes, but with the mind

by distractionpie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, I was trying to write charming intellectual bonding, Jean Kirstein Wears Glasses, M/M, Pre-Relationship, References to Shakespeare, Studying, i haven't studied lit in years and i kept having to google to refresh myself, i love that it autofinds that tag for me, i swear that's not what's going on here, slightly concerned it reads like the year i kept shoehorning my essays into my nanowrimo draft, this was written in 12hrs and parts of that were on the bus so hmu if you spot any glaring errors, to artificially inflate the wordcount
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22668730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: When Armin was paired for Jean Kirschtein for their English class project, Eren predicted it would be trouble but Armin hadn't taken his friend's fears to heart. But their first study session quickly proved that Armin's expectations were all wrong.
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	not with the eyes, but with the mind

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://violettemcon.tumblr.com/post/190761590231/imagine-jean-not-having-money-to-renew-his) and chat in the jearmin discord about shakespeare that put me in such a fit of inspiration that i'm totally disregarding my posting schedule to put this up immediately.
> 
> Title from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Randomly assigned project partners were an important part of the academic experience, or at least a necessary evil. Armin couldn't deny that his first impulse was to do all the work himself but that was why there was a need to assign partners – collaboration was a vital skill to develop.

Eren had been less than persuaded by this reasoning, in large part due to the name that had been drawn alongside Armin's being that of Jean Kirschtein. 

It was true that when partners had been alphabetically assigned Jaeger and Kirschtein had been a disastrous combination, but Armin was far too familiar with Eren's unusual study habits to put the blame for that fairly on Jean. 

And so Armin had mostly ignored Eren's dire pronouncements that Jean would pick on him or make him do all the work. Eren and Jean had been fighting each other their whole academic career and that conflict had never spilled over into affecting their respective friends before now and while Jean wasn't a straight A student like Armin, he was securely in the top third of their class, a position he wouldn't be able to maintain without either some studying or a degree of cheating that would involve more far work than just completing his assignments the proper way. 

If nothing else, Jean was friends with Marco and strange as that connection seemed Armin trusted that their good hearted class president wouldn't be so trusting of anybody who was the sort of person to give Armin a need to use the mace Eren had insisted on putting in his book bag last night. 

He was regretting being so early though. Waiting around alone for Jean to arrive left him too much time to anticipate the potential awkwardness of the session. Even without malice, Any two people who had shared classes for years without ever really socialising were bound to be uncomfortable with each other.

Just as he was beginning to get truly antsy, but only a few minute after the time they’d agreed to meet, the door of the study room he’d booked for them slip open, and Jean walked in, slightly out of breath.

He looked much like Armin had expected out of uniform, slightly battered jeans but nice sneakers, with a t-shirt and an athletic jacket, his backpack causing it to crease at the shoulders. His hair was a little messier than usual, like he might have only got out of bed just before coming instead of taking the time to style it into a cool sort of messy.

But all the things he’d guessed right mean nothing in comparison to the one surprising feature.

Perched on Jean’s nose were spectacles.

There were a plain style and the way the lenses magnified Jean’s eyes and revealed accents of copper and honey in Jean’s eyes that were like nothing Armin had ever seen before, showed they were meant to improve vision, not just be a fashion accessory – although they served as one even if that wasn’t their purpose.

Their mere presence gave him an intellectual air despite his otherwise casual presentation and the dark frames and square shape balanced the long angles of his face, taking some of the hardness out of his expression. And it was a harsh expression indeed as he growled, "Not a word, okay?" The roughness of Jean’s voice and the deep crease of his brow seemed designed for intimidation but Armin found his attention caught instead by the pinking of Jean's ears as he flopped into the opposite seat. 

Still, they were here to study, not for Armin to gawk at the way when Jean blinked his long lashes almost brushed up against the lenses, or how he bit his lip as he scrunched his face to try and adjust their position.

“Do you have any ideas?” Armin had already been thinking on the project, but since this was supposed to be collaborative it would be better to hear Jean out than push his own ideas and risk Jean just going along and feeling there was no point in trying since Armin had all the answers. 

"We know Ms. Ral likes romantic and sentimental literature, so the obvious choice to suck up is to choose something with those themes," Jean remarked, which was a true observation. Armin had never used a teacher's personal preferences as the basis for choosing his assignments’ theses but now he was thinking of it, Jean’s remark was consistent in trends he’s seen in classmates’ projects. “We don't wanna go too obvious though, and I’ve had detention with her twice -- she’s not as much of a softie as people think.”

“I think we should rule out everything from Romeo and Juliet and most of the comedies," Armin decided, trying not to wonder what Jean had done to merit not one but two detentions from the forgiving Ms. Ral. "If that's okay with you?"

"Yeah, they’re the easy picks. Hamlet and Macbeth too," Jean agreed. "And Coriolanus.”

Armin dropped his pen. “Coriolanus? Really? I can’t imagine anybody going for that.” He wasn’t sure he’d pick for their presentation anyway, but it seemed a bizarre choice to rule out.

“There was an adaptation the other year, with a guy from that one superhero series,” Jean said, fidgeting with the side of his glasses and sending them sliding down the bridge of his nose until they were barely perched on the tip and Armin itched to lean across the table and push them back into place. “And there are always people who pick their projects based on the hotness of the actors in the movie versions.”

“What about King Lear, with Kent and the King? The loyalty might appeal to Ms. Ral’s tastes, but most of our current class were in Mr Bozad’s class last year so they covered Othello instead.” 

Jean grimaced. "Marco took Ms. Ral’s class with me last year, and the equivalent to our current one last semester, and he and Samuel picked Lear and Cordelia for this assignment," he said. "With me as your partner, using that idea is going to look like we're cribbing from him."

“Fair enough,” Armin said. He wouldn’t want to repeat and idea that Eren or Mikasa had used either and always encouraged them not to take inspiration from his. It was one thing to learn generally from friends, but even if there was no cheating going on it was out of the spirit of things to take advantage of foreknowledge that might have been picked up even accidentally from a friend who’d already taken the same assessment. 

"Sorry," Jean added, although Armin didn't see why he'd feel any sense of fault for the fact the ideas had happened to overlap, and as he ducked his head the glasses slipped right off the end of his nose.

"They don't fit you at all, do they?" Armin asked, only remembering after the words had slipped out that Jean hadn't wanted him to acknowledge the glasses.

"They’re old, the frames are kind of warped. I got them when I first failed the eye test but I just took them off every time I was in public because they made me look bug-eyed and weird, so eventually my mom gave in and let me have contacts,” Jean admitted, putting the glasses back on. “But I'm down to my last box, so I need to save them for school. I figured nobody else is gonna be at the library this early on a weekend, and you won't say anything.”

If he relayed this conversation to Eren his friend would probably conclude that Jean was implying that Armin wouldn’t say anything - or else. But as Jean once again adjusted the frames, the only impression Armin got was that he was being entrusted with something and it warmed him to realise it, even though he didn’t really understand why Jean wouldn’t want people to see him in glasses -- they certainly drew attention to his eyes, but that certainly wasn’t a negative.

Deciding to shift the conversation back away from the topic which Jean found so illogically uncomfortable, Armin said, "There’s one thing I have been considering: Ms. Ral told us to write about a relationship, but she didn't specify between two characters."

Jean raised his eyebrows, "What are you thinking?" 

“Perhaps we could write about one of the speeches, and it would mean we could use something fairly well studied but still get marks for originality because we’re approaching it in an unexpected way.

"That's... Different," Jean said slowly, and Armin felt his hope drop. He’d thought it was a good suggestion, and he wanted to pick something they could get started with rather than be stuck for hours debating a topic but doing no work. But ‘different’ was rarely good in high school.

“I… it was just an idea,” he said. “But perhaps it’s a little too out-there. We don’t want Ms. Ral to think we’ve misunderstood.”

Jean’s glasses slipped down his nose again as he wrinkled it in thought. “As long as we were clear I don’t think she would assume that. Other people might do something totally off topic, but you’re a top student so you’d have the benefit of the doubt. There are certainly a lot of good speeches and it would mean we could have two layers of analysis, the relationship of the speaker with their audience within the narrative, and with the audience of the play.”

Oh. Armin hadn’t even thought of a meta-analysis approach, but that would almost help them stand out. “We could contrast the relationship with the audience at the time of the original performance versus the way modern audiences relate to the texts.”

“Remember, we only have ten minutes to speak,” Jean interjected. “And Ms. Ral might like us for going over, but the rest of the class won’t.”

“It will be easier to trim down too many ideas than try to pad out a weak subject,” Armin assured him. Cutting down his work didn’t come naturally to him, but—

“True, we can always do a test read to Connie and Sasha,” Jean suggested. “And edit at the point their eyes start to glaze over.”

Armin laughed. “Great, so we have a concept. But we still need to pick a play and some characters. I think if we’re going for an unusual approach to prompt then we should try to stick with something most of the class are familiar with.”

“Henry V,” Jean said, a statement rather than a suggestion. “The rallying speech is iconic, but how many people have really thought about how he does it?”

“I… it could work,” Armin agreed, trying to remember the full content. “The relationship of a commander…”

“But he positions them as friends, despite the fact he’s their king, shifting the relationship so that they’ll follow him. So we can ask does he really care? How much is inspiration and how much is manipulation when he says, ‘ _Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’_ ;" Jean recited, not just saying the words but delivering them, kindly of the volume of the library but with the conviction of King Henry urging his men towards Harfleur, and then settled his glasses properly over his eyes once again as he continued past the famous opening lines, "‘ _Or close the wall up with our English dead.  
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man_  
 _As modest stillness and humility:_  
 _But when--_ ’”

Jean cut himself off with an embarrassed grin, ears pinking again. “Ah, well I should probably get us a copy rather than working from my memory of it. If you agree?”

“Yes,” Armin replied. Oh, a thousand yeses to the project, which he could already tell was going to be perfect. But as Jean got up and turned away to walk into the stacks in search of the needed book, he realised that perhaps Eren was right about being paired with Jean turning into a problem.

Just for all the wrong reasons.


End file.
